


Warhound

by GoldenThreads



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Light Dom/sub, Married Sex, Oral Sex, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24118330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads
Summary: The problem is this: Hubert has spent years and years treating her with an achingly gentle kindness, lifting her up without ever setting hurdles for her to jump to earn his praise, protecting her from all the world without letting her hide from the things that can’t hurt her, and the one time Bernadetta tries to do the same for him, theone time,he shuts it down and runs off to kill a man instead.Bernadetta and Hubert have their very first fight. It has its benefits.
Relationships: Bernadetta von Varley/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 45
Kudos: 201
Collections: Hubernie Week





	Warhound

**Author's Note:**

> Hubernie Week: Days Six & Seven - Fight & Reunion
> 
> General content warnings for Hubert-typical violence and Bernadetta-typical mental health issues.

“Hubert!”

“We will continue this conversation at another date,” Hubert says, each word tight and cramped against its fellows from all the lies packed within. They’ll never discuss it again if he has his way, and Bernadetta isn’t prepared to let that happen, not when it’s such a simple thing that means so very much.

_“Please.”_ She reaches for his hand and her fingers pass on through an echo as he warps to the opposite side of the bed.

“I have work to attend to. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Well, well maybe I _won’t_ excuse you!”

Hubert’s eyes narrow dangerously, and all at once Bernadetta remembers what it’s like to be afraid of him. Not that she _does_ fear him—her husband is harmless as a kitten when it comes to their marriage, for better and worse—but the nostalgia of it lingers like a scab she longs to pick at. There are faces he doesn’t like to show her, and even two years into their marriage, Bernadetta is still scrambling to catch glimpses of his raw heart behind the kindly masks.

And that’s what started all of this. She peeked at something she shouldn’t have, jimmied open a door he wanted closed, and now—

“Lady Vestra.” Hubert only ever calls her that when he’s teasing, even if there isn’t a single drop of mirth in his pinched expression now. If he wanted the words to create prim and proper distance, he shouldn’t have whispered them in her ear between sneaking kisses at state dinners. “Do you take issue with my leaving on _business?”_

Bernadetta stomps round the bed and points a finger to his chest, right over where one of his knives would be if he were actually packing. It jabs into muscle instead. “There is no business, mister. You just invented an assassination to get out of discussing your feelings!”

“I have invented no such thing. The plan has been in the works for months, pending the most opportune time to strike.”

“Like now.”

“Yes.”

“And it has _nothing_ to do with me wanting to talk about—”

“I am late,” Hubert snips, voice strained by his attempt to sound gruff and high-handed in equal measure. He ducks down to give a perfunctory kiss to the crown of her head, grabs his Murder Bag, squares his shoulders, and storms out of the room.

He slams the door behind him.

Except. He doesn’t. It hurtles towards the frame. Bernadetta braces for impact, for the noise, the finality, and then there is only a thump as it hits the side of his hastily outstretched shoe jammed between the gap. Hubert stares at her wild-eyed through the crack of the door—penitent, desperate, agonized over the thought of her instinctive shiver of fear, that it should ever be directed at him, for Killer of Men is a title honest and true, while Slammer of Doors would condemn him.

And tears leap to Bernadetta’s eyes, for she loves him so very, very much.

Only once he is sure she will neither follow nor collapse in fright, only then does he carefully ease the door shut. Bernadetta listens for his quiet footfalls, that noise he makes only within the boundaries of their home, and then the shudder of magic when his warp spell drags him from the house entirely.

Bernadetta sits on the corner of the bed. Flops backwards to stare at the ceiling. One minute, then two, three. Still he has not returned to apologize. Four, five. She grabs a pillow from over her head and hurls it across the room to where it knocks over a tray of sewing supplies in a raucous clatter.

Nothing. She’s really, truly, alone. 

They had an argument and Hubert stormed out. He actually left. They had a _fight._ They’ve never done that before.

It feels… _glorious!_

Bernadetta rolls over and clutches the bedding, screaming into the blanket in frustration and joy and all the beautiful agony of catharsis. All these years, ever since Hubert first pinned her flower to his breast, she’s been waiting for him to tire of her, to regret their ties, to snap and threaten her with all the noxious self-loathing boiling in the tar pit of his heart. Now the shoe has dropped, and it means nothing at all, changes not a single thing. Hubert only drew in on himself like a sea urchin, all slow-moving spines desperate for escape, and Bernadetta held her ground without a second thought. Soon they will apologize, too, and there isn’t a drop of terror in her chest! The ocean of self-doubt for _this,_ for _him,_ has dried to a desert of soft sand, a warm bed for shy reptiles to bask upon, sunning themselves in the constancy of love. 

The euphoria of normalcy quickly passes. With a sigh, Bernadetta reaches for the pegasus plushie tucked between their pillows and buries her face between its soft wings, breathing in the faint traces of stale coffee and viscous ozone. Whenever Hubert returns from a mission too keyed up to string his words together, she tucks him into bed and makes him hold the stuffed animal until his hands stop shaking, or at least until Bernadetta finishes throwing together a meal and can snuggle up to him herself. 

“He could probably use you right now,” she mumbles to her adorable companion. It’s all well and good to have a personal victory, but she’d prefer a together victory any day. 

The problem is this: Hubert has spent years and years treating her with an achingly gentle kindness, lifting her up without ever setting hurdles for her to jump to earn his praise, protecting her from all the world without letting her hide from the things that can’t hurt her, and the one time Bernadetta tries to do the same for him, the _one time,_ he shuts it down and runs off to kill a man instead. 

She can’t deny it hurts. The sting of being brushed off she can live with; the fear of estrangement from her husband she cannot. It’s the closest thing to fury she’s felt since the final days of the war, seeing a city burn for no rhyme or reason beyond a final reminder that suffering rots the breast of every man or beast—that Hubert, _her Hubert,_ keeps something broken and rotting and silent within him sparks a rage she cannot bear.

Bernadetta holds up the stuffed toy, stretching her arms out like one might with a child. They can have arguments now, and then can surely bumble their way through the apologies, but that is not a solution for the heart of the problem — the resolution of their emotional arc!

“If this were a novel,” she mumbles, staring fixedly at Morrigan the pegasus, as it is always easier to focus on a problem when you refuse to look away, or at least that’s what Edelgard and Ferdinand have told her in _vastly_ different ways. “Then…I’d need to up the stakes. Really rub his face into what he’s missing!”

The only way to make him crave her affection is to deny him it.

Wow. Everyone in every book she’s ever read is a _horrible_ person and not an empowering role model at all, actually!

“Ugh! Maybe…if he won’t accept me cherishing him, then, then what if I don’t let _him_ cherish _me?_ That’ll make him understand how I feel!” The next time Hubert makes her tea in the morning, she can cheerfully thank him, dump the cup, and go to make her own. When they go to next week’s harvest festival and Hubert tries to give her his coat, she can drape it back over his arm and ask Dorothea for hers instead. And when Hubert ducks to press a kiss to the crown of her head, she can scoot on past him without—

The very thought of it brings tears prickling to her eyes, and Bernadetta groans loud enough to fill the room. She doesn’t want dramatics, she only wants them to be _real_ with each other. Not that this life of theirs is _un_ real, but she wants…more. The anger in him that he doesn’t bring home for fear of scaring her, but which she longs to bear witness to, as though an undertaker carefully polishing reliquary bones. For all he’s made of knives, never a one has ever been pointed her way, and they never could be, so how can she prove herself worthy of their handling? 

She wants the way he argues with Ferdinand, the push and pull of ferociously contradictory ideas without fear of any scratches on the hard-won relationship beneath. She wants the surety he feels with Edelgard, the way he swears to follow her every whim yet flaunts her acceptance of his every eccentricity, from scheming behind her back to snatching cake from her imperial hands. She wants the way Caspar makes him laugh _so_ loud, and the way Linhardt can silence him into scholarly fixation when he shares some new discovery, and more than anything she wants the nostalgic familiarity he shares with Petra, who will never see him as frightening after having witnessed his first grubby attempts at teenage facial hair. 

It’s not that Bernadetta wants to be spoken over and disregarded and taken for granted, of course. And it’s not that Hubert handles her with kid gloves, a layer of buttery lambskin between her hands and his. It’s that he’s so wretchedly petrified of being a _bad husband _that she wants to take him by the shoulders and scream.__

____

Her fingers scrape down Morrigan’s fluffy mane before she clutches the creature back to her chest. “I just. He’s _perfect_ to me. H-how do I make him understand?” The tears bubble over, and Bernadetta lets them fall. The crash of adrenaline and uncertainty of heartbreak—she can name the tremors in her chest now, categorize and put them on their proper shelves with the same precision she uses in organizing Hubert’s poisons and other noxious supplies.

____

There used to be a time when sobbing herself to sleep was the only way Bernadetta could manage to nod off, and it still sinks its drowsy hooks in her. She curls around Morrigan and lets herself drift, too miserable to fight it. When she wakes, everything will be better. 

____

Once, in the war, after a Strike Force meeting when everyone watched in mute horror as Edelgard and Hubert strolled in after a discussion with their mysterious allies, when Edelgard’s buns had uncurled from their pristine perfection and Hubert bled through the bandages and sling that pinned his mauled arm to his chest while he issued his report, when everyone knew something was _wrong_ and still could not muster the words to ask what—Bernadetta had a dream. It was all very simple. She was outdoors in the most beautiful garden, full of willow trees that dripped with ruby red carnation petals, and when she sat down beneath its sanguine shade, twin demonic beasts trotted up to rest their heavy heads at her side, a vision in snow white and ashen black.

____

Bernadetta never spoke of it to anyone, because who would understand that it was a dream, not a nightmare? That was when she’d realized that all the messy bits and bobs of her heart were a single project, the underside of an embroidery project she wasn’t quite ready to unveil to the world, but needed to unveil to herself: she loved Hubert von Vestra. She, too, would follow Lady Edelgard into hell, onto the pyre. And while the enacting of it terrified her quite badly, the truth of it shook her not a bit. 

____

Nothing Hubert does ever shakes her now. Not the gore permanently embedded in the rug of their washing room, not the collection of toxic amphibians stored in their ice box, not the new traces of brutality she finds scarred into his body when she traces his stained skin with her lips. Only the way they took lemonade in the gardens the autumn after the public war’s end, and Hubert fidgeted with his hands for two hours as he listened to her retell the plot of the opera she attended the evening before, and then held out his hand to her with a ring in his palm, saying, _I found this in the family vaults. It reminded me of you. If it is not an offense to your plans. That is to say, after your travels are concluded, would there ever be a day you might consider… My apologies. Consider it a moment’s foolish whimsy—_

____

And he said no more for many hours, occupied with Bernadetta clutching her arms around his neck and refusing to ever let go. 

____

Her eyelashes flutter against the pillow, and she scowls miserably at the itchy wetness soaked against her cheek. A quick trip to the washroom to freshen up does wonders. 

____

“Alright, Morrigan. Let’s figure this out.” She plucks up the pegasus from where it had tumbled to the floor and carries it to her desk. “I’ll practice what I want to say to you first, okay? Then it won’t be so hard.”

____

What started their fight is so silly. If Hubert had simply chuckled, shrugged it off as an accident, she’d never have thought anything of it. Instead he shut down entirely, mortified to a murderous degree. 

____

“I’m sorry if I upset you. I have trouble sometimes telling if you’re annoyed by something like, um, a mosquito bite, or if you’re really, really suffering. You make the same face either way. And that’s fine! There’s nothing wrong with that, I just…you don’t need to tell me what hurt you, you know? But I need to know if it’s one or the other, or I’ll mess it all up.”

____

The room shifts a little, like a breeze rushing in though all of the windows are closed. Bernadetta closes her eyes and breathes deep to catch the faint smell of sulfur, the after-burn of a protection spell failing mid-warp. It happens sometimes when her husband hurries home so fast he fails to let the other spells wane first. 

____

She keeps talking anyway.

____

“Because um, maybe I’m wrong, but it felt like a mosquito bite thing that you scratched at and scratched at and… If it’s a bad memory thing, I won’t bring it up ever again. You know I won’t. But if it’s because you think you don’t _deserve_ nice things, or, or that I’ll think less of you if you want something a little bit too much…then I can’t agree to disagree about it.”

____

No movement out of the corner of her eye — the ingrained habits of a spy prevent Hubert from opening a door he can’t silence mid-conversation, and all of their doors creak just enough. He must be standing behind the threshold. Maybe a better man wouldn’t eavesdrop, but he’s the best man she knows, and she didn’t marry a spy to complain about him being what he is.

____

“I want to give you _everything,_ can’t you understand that? I was so excited to, to find something I could actually _do_ —so I’m sorry that I pushed, and didn’t listen, but please. _Please._ It won’t change anything. It’ll only let me love you even more. I don’t think it’s any weirder than, oh, the frogs in our icebox or the throwing knives behind the mattress. Or that time your experiment went bad and everything turned green in the wash. It was so exciting to learn to wear green, you know? Everything is wonderful and exciting with you.”

____

Bernadetta stands up and moves to the door with her softest steps, praying he won’t flee. She presses her hand to the wood. “I just want you. The sharp bits, and the soft bits, too.”

____

The door opens with a click. She pulls it in towards her chest and peeks around it with warm, twinkling eyes. “Did you kill your man?”

____

Hubert looks rather like the man tried to kill him instead, his hair a windswept mess and his eyes fever-bright as though he has just been hounded as the prey of some noble’s fox hunt. He opens his mouth, shuts it, shakes his head, and without a word she understands: _I could not focus with you mad at me._

____

Her heart thuds in her chest. Were this a novel, a good one—the kind she’ll have to write, now that she knows how wretched all those fictional women can be—she would take him by the hand and smile, confident enough to lend him all the strength he could need.

____

Bernadetta breaks into tears instead. 

____

“You’ll get him next time,” she promises as she wraps her arms around Hubert’s neck. He stoops to lessen the strain on her tippy toes and her back, and Bernadetta sobs harder still, guilty over ever considering she could turn away from his affection.

____

From the stiffness in his every limb, he must be choking on a similar guilt: a failed mission, a failed marriage?

____

No.

____

She draws back and frames his face with her hands, thumbs tracing his cheekbones. His eyes skitter over her tear-stained skin even as her own gaze never wavers. Confidence she cannot muster, but firmness is little different than the unwavering form of a peerless archer, fingers steady on the arrow. “I’m sorry. I’m furious with you, but um, you didn’t do anything wrong. Did you know that’s a thing that can happen?”

____

“Astonishing,” he manages, voice pitched low as a crackle of flame and twice as dry.

____

“I meant the both at once,” Bernadetta adds. “Not the you not doing anything wrong part. Did you hear everything that I said?”

____

“You were not particularly quiet.”

____

“Oh, that’s good then. I don’t feel very quiet about this. Is it a mosquito bite?”

____

Hubert’s brows pitch together. 

____

She waits. There are a million and one memories that could make what happened a sore spot for him, but her gut says otherwise, and Hubert’s always the one telling her that’s just as good as a spy’s training. And more important still is the fact he never lies to her. Conveniently neglects to share information, sure. But when asked directly, he has never once broken the oath of truthfulness he swore in their marriage vows.

____

“It is merely an…embarrassment.”

____

This time Bernadetta does grab his hand and pull him into the bedroom, all the way over to their bed where she gestures broadly to the friendly flock framing the headboard. “Embarrassing like the twenty-three stuffed animals I still keep in arm’s reach? The ones whose names you learned?”

____

He scowls, pointedly looking away. “They are precious to you.”

____

_“You’re_ precious to me.” Bernadetta hops up onto the bed and stands on her knees to gain a few more inches of height. “Please?”

____

Before their wedding, Bernadetta spent so many nights lying next to him, doing nothing save accustoming herself to the pattern of his breathing, to the warmth of his body through their clothes, to the fact that he really, truly, absolutely would not reach an uninvited hand to her. It gave her courage on their wedding day, when through her happy tears she bid him finally undress her, and for so many nights more, learning his body as she invited him into hers, flourishing in his bed like an orchid in bloom. But he never asked for anything, never nudged them towards anything they had not already done, and though Bernadetta knows he takes his greatest pleasure in pleasing her, she has failed to uncover what else makes his blood sing.

____

Until this morning.

____

Hubert says nothing, but when she reaches for his face once more, he leans into the touch with half-lidded eyes. She strains to kiss his forehead, the tip of his nose, and each eyelid in turn. She reaches for the firmness of an arrow strung taut on the bow.

____

“Go wash up, okay? And then come right b-back to me.”

____

He goes without a word, and Bernadetta’s heart starts beating a frantic jig. Is he actually going to let her—?

____

The moment Hubert leaves the room, Bernadetta leaps to her feet and shimmies out of her vest and skirts until only her lilac chemise remains, all soft curves and faint stains from the watercolor paints she uses. She knows all too well that Hubert loves the cut of it, the way it frames her small breasts and reveals the puckered Bolganone scarring over her collarbone that she earned while defending Lady Edelgard. A quick glance in the mirror to confirm her hair isn’t a bird’s nest from the nap earlier, and then she sits back on the bed with her legs dangling over the side, summoning up all her courage.

____

She can do this. She is not naive to how it works—Bernadetta has read many, many books, thank you.

____

_He trusts me, he trusts me—_

____

And he looks so very lovely when he reappears in the doorway, dressed down to a half-buttoned shirt hanging down to his thighs. Hubert lingers, unsure in his own home, his own skin, and she watches the bob of his throat as he swallows back his protests. 

____

Bernadetta takes a breath.

____

“Come sit with me, lovely.” Her voice trembles on the words, but none of them break, and oh, how wonderful that curling lilt of _lovely, lovely_ on her tongue.

____

When he doesn’t move, Bernadetta’s hand taps twice against the side of her bare thigh. 

____

In an instant he drops to his knees at her feet, hitting the carpet with such force she jolts with giddy surprise. Hubert freezes there, staring up at her in wild-eyed devastation, unable to so much as breathe against her skin until she reaches out to comb a hand through his messy locks and slowly, decisively curls her fingers into a white-knuckled fist. 

____

Something wretched hisses from his lips, but Bernadetta holds him firm, grounding him as he leans into her touch and all but collapses against her legs. She directs him with a subtle twist of her wrist until his chin rests on the bone of her knee, his desire-dark eyes gazing hazily up at her.

____

It is much the same way Hubert looked this morning, when he bent to devour her with his usual prowess. All Bernadetta did was tangle her fingers in his hair, sob rapturous at his touch, and tell him how good, _how very, very good you are, my lovely_ —and Hubert spilled, spooked, and ran.

____

“There we are, my perfect darling,” Bernadetta hums, braver by the moment. It is fine if she falters—he would never expect her to be anyone but herself. She brushes the fingers of her free hand over his face, cupping one heated cheek and crooning her pleasure when he turns to kiss the palm. “You’ve done, um, enough for today. I have you, sweetheart. I only want you to breathe for me. Yes, like that. You are simply so very, very perfect for me…”

____

Hubert shivers with every word, and though he keeps himself from rutting against her calves like a back-alley mongrel, his suffering is clear to see—and easy to ignore. It isn’t what he wants. 

____

“Today just wasn’t your day.” She sighs and loosens her grasp, taking Hubert’s head in her hands instead. Her fingers scratch roughly into his scalp as his eyes flutter shut. “All your brilliant plans dashed…that’s alright. You can have a rest now.”

____

His expression shifts to annoyance, mouth opening to protest—and Bernadetta slides a thumb into that wet warmth, pressing down upon his tongue to pin it in place. 

____

Goddess, she’s wet enough he must be able to _smell_ her. And that’s an idea, isn’t it? If he’s so desperate to prove himself…

____

“I d-didn’t say you could argue,” Bernadetta snips, all fake affront as her eyes sparkle with affection. “But I suppose…you need a chance to earn your reward, don’t you, darling? You’re always so very good to me…you’d be sad if you didn’t get to prove it.”

____

Only one of her legs is frozen beneath Hubert’s heavy head. The other she spreads to one side, letting her chemise ride up high enough on her thighs to show nothing lies beneath.

____

He keens, high and broken, and it is balm enough against her overheated skin, pulls her back from the edge of anxiety even as a blush burns on her cheeks from giving such a bold invitation. She slips her hand from his mouth and slides those lithe fingers back into his hair, scratching approvingly at his scalp. Just this, for now. 

____

“Go on.”

____

Hubert is so gentle, so cautiously desperate as he nudges between her thighs, lips trailing her soft skin, gaze flicking back to her for affirmation inch by inch. He laps against her folds with bated breath—

____

“There you are. _Mm._ Just your mouth, n-now, lovely. You’re always so good to me.” 

____

And he sinks into her, shoulders falling in bliss, eyes a thin sliver of green glass. 

____

Every curl of his tongue is a maddening trial as Bernadetta tries not to squirm, holding fast to the control he’s granted her. If this is the catharsis he craves—praised, rewarded, and stripped of every care—then she will simply rise to the challenge, as she has risen to every one thus far.

____

“My sweet, sweet terror,” she croons as he moves to the swell of her clit, the smallest of buds, and lavishes panting kisses upon it. For all he is a quick study, she is a lengthy topic, and they both know he will chase her pleasure long into the night if she gives him his way. Hopefully he is learning her own industry is not to be challenged either.

____

Next time, perhaps there is something more she can do with her hands. If he needs only a grounding presence to thrive then—a collar, lilacs embroidered upon black leather in a band around his throat, yes, that will do very well to remind her ravenous beast of his place at her feet, beloved.

____

Did he think he couldn’t protect her like this, whining his devotions into the depths of her, his mouth slick with every drip of pleasure he has dragged from her needy cunt? Such service cannot lesson him in her eyes—and it will never leave the bedroom. No one else will ever know him this way: a gift beyond bearing.

____

Hubert is perfect, and she is perfect with him, and there can be no harm if she bends forward to be the one kissing the crown of his head as she whispers, “Do you see how I love you? My terrifyingly good boy, my sweet and vicious pet, _ah,_ mine for now and ever.”

____

He shudders and gasps against Bernadetta’s thigh, her hands stroking through his hair to soothe him down from his crisis, to distract him from the mess he’s made of the carpet. When he finally settles, she gives him a gentle tap on the cheek.

____

“Darling,” she sighs. “Um, did I say you could stop?”

____

**Author's Note:**

> Hubert von Had A Meltdown Over His Wife Discovering His Praise Kink


End file.
